DeLoss Dodds to step down as athletic director

AUSTIN — DeLoss Dodds, who helped build the richest athletic department in the country during more than 32 years at Texas, will announce on Tuesday he will step down as the Longhorns’ athletic director next summer, two UT sources said Monday.

Dodds, 76, will remain in his current position until Aug. 31, 2014, and then stay at UT as a consultant, the sources said. Earlier this month, Dodds denied an Internet report he would leave his post before the end of the calendar year. UT hopes to have a replacement for Dodds before he steps down.

Dodds’ pending announcement comes at a time when football coach Mack Brown, whose team is 2-2 this year following three other subpar seasons, is facing intense speculation about his job security. Men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes and baseball coach Augie Garrido also have seen their programs dip in recent years.

Since arriving from Kansas State in 1981, Dodds has overseen a men’s program that won 14 national championships and 107 conference titles. He led the charge to erect gleaming new stadiums, to renovate the old ones with state-of-the-art amenities and luxury boxes, and to turn his department into a money-printing machine that generated a national-best $163.3 million last year.

Even more significantly, the former small-town Kansas track star known as the “Riley Flash” became an influential figure in college sports’ near-constant evolution. Whether it was ballooning TV contracts, rules changes or conference realignment, for more than three decades, Dodds had a hand in it.

“At multiple stages throughout his career he was considered one of the strongest leaders in the profession,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said last summer. “He shaped the agenda for what became of college athletics.”